Sadly, No, People Don't Want To Pay More In Taxes

One of the great mantras of our times is that people really, really, would like to pay more in taxes. What is received from government in return is of such huge value that the populace is simply gagging to be able to hand over more of their hard earned cash in return for such bounties, it being only the cruelty and disregard of neoliberalism which prevents them from being able to do so. It is possible to show that this is not so.

In fact, a decade and a bit back, in 2006, I started to show that this was wrong. There is something, over the Pond, called the Gifts to the United States account. Anyone who wishes to can simply send a bit more money to Uncle Sam by sending it there--it gains some $4 million a year or so from memory. So, we could indeed say that US taation is too low therefore. It's too low by that $4 million which people voluntarily pay extra.

I followed that up with a piece in The Times redoing the numbers for the UK. It took a bit of time to get the figures as they weren't something that were regularly totted up. In fact, as I recall it, it took near a month and there was a certain mystification as to why anyone would be asking. But the answer was that yes, UK taxes were in fact too low:

LAST YEAR there were five people in Britain who thought that their taxes were too low. No, this isn’t the number of people who have called for higher taxes. Rather, it is those who were so convinced of the righteousness of state spending that they voluntarily sent extra money to the Treasury.

It's worth pointing out that of those 5, 4 of them were dead.

Others have since then picked up on the idea and we do occasionally see people mentioning that you can indeed pay more if that's what you wish to do. As with Douglas Carswell monstering Owen Jones who insisted that he did want to pay more tax on his book royalty income except perhaps not just right now:

So far this is all rather more amusing than anything else, but the greater publicity of this ability to pay more has indeed led to more people making those extra voluntary payments. Further, to a more regular reporting of how many do so:

Jeremy Corbyn’s claim that many people want to pay “more tax” to clear the national debt or fund public services has been undermined by official figures.

Figures disclosed by the Government show that just 15 taxpayers made financial gifts worth less than £200,000 to the Government over the past two years.

15 people is of course more than 5.

The Debt Management Office said that £180,393 in 2016/17 and £14,558 in 2015/16 was made in these voluntary payments.

Most of this came from a single bequest of £177,700 in the last financial year. The other donated or bequeathed by the other 14 people were for relatively trivial sums. Someone gave 1p, another gave 3p and a third person handed over £1.84 to the Government.

Although not that much more then if we're honest about it.

Norway recently made rather more of a noise about it, the government actively advertising the ability to pay more:

Hammered by the opposition for slashing taxes and going on a spending spree with the country’s oil money, the center-right government has hit back with a bold proposal: voluntary contributions.

Launched in June, the initiative has received a lukewarm reception, with the equivalent of just $1,325 in extra revenue being collected so far, according to the Finance Ministry.